


Like the Sweet Song of a Choir

by gutsforgarters



Series: come on, now, try and understand / the way i feel when i’m in your hands [5]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Zombie Apocalypse, F/M, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, First Kiss, Older Man/Younger Woman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-11-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:48:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21595639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutsforgarters/pseuds/gutsforgarters
Summary: The thing is, Beth’s devoted a lot of daydreaming to this scenario. Back when she first thought about it, Daryl was always the one who initiated things, holding her face between his big hands as he leaned in close and breathed hot across her rabbiting pulse. Later on, she figured that she’d have to be the one to do it, that he was too shy to start anything on his own. But whether she initiated it or he did, whether it was rough or soft or heated or sweet, it never happened because she’d just plain lost her patience with him.But that’s what happens now.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Beth Greene
Series: come on, now, try and understand / the way i feel when i’m in your hands [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1541086
Comments: 17
Kudos: 79





	Like the Sweet Song of a Choir

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kattyshack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/gifts).
  * Inspired by [cross my heart, pretty darlin’, over you](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20227051) by [kattyshack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattyshack/pseuds/kattyshack). 



> Maj promised me that she'd take a nap if I re-wrote [Chapter 9](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20227051/chapters/49571102) of _cross my heart_ \--specifically, Chapter 9's Big Damn Kiss--from Beth's perspective. Maj, if you're reading this, I expect you to take that nap now. 
> 
> Since this is a direct re-write, it goes without saying that 99.9% of the dialogue herein isn't mine; it's Maj's. I have her explicit permission to use it. 
> 
> Title from "Burning Love" by Elvis Presley, although I listened to [the orchestral version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VZZu0lejrw) featuring the Royal Philharmonic while I wrote, and I recommend that you listen to it too as you read!

Daryl snores.

She’s never spent the night at a guy’s before, but it didn’t keep her up or anything, probably because she’s used to it. Her _dad_ snores like a rusty chainsaw, loud enough for her to hear it from the other end of the upstairs hallway, whereas Daryl just sort of rumbles softly in his sleep like a big purring barn cat. It’s kinda soothing, actually.

She tucks it away into the growing treasure trove of Things She Knows About Daryl: doesn’t like to be touched, _really_ doesn’t like it when other people touch _her_ without her permission, maybe doesn’t mind it when _she_ touches _him_ , updated his truck’s stereo just to make her happy, likes Springsteen, calls her a _smartass_ in the same tone of voice most people use to call her _honey_ or _sweetheart_. Snores.

Beth smiles into the squashed pillow that smells a lot like Daryl and a little bit like her and just kind of basks in those snores, or maybe basks in the fact that she’s in a position to hear them, innocent as that position may be. Daryl’s bed is toasty warm from their shared body heat, and she doesn’t want to leave this nest they’ve made, not at all, but her bladder’s starting to twinge something awful, and she knows without checking her phone’s clock that she can’t wallow for much longer if she doesn’t want Maggie to send out an amber alert.

So very, _very_ begrudgingly, she pushes up onto one elbow and shoves her tangled hair out of her gummy eyes, pausing to indulge in one last long look at Daryl. He’s tense even in his sleep, frown lines carved deep between his furrowed eyebrows, but his mouth is slack and soft-looking in the forest of his stubble, and the ruffled state of his dark hair makes her want to comb it flat. Maybe she would, if she wasn’t afraid of waking him up. He always looks so exhausted; he needs to rest when he can.

She climbs carefully out of bed and slides her bracelets onto her wrist before she can follow up on her impulse to pet him, or worse, plant her face in his scruffy throat and inhale his thick, musky smell at its source. _She_ smells a little like him, now, the scent of his skin overlaying hers like perfume, and it kind of makes her want to never shower again.

 _Jeez_ , but she’s got it bad, hasn’t she?

Well, yeah. She already knew that, and if she _hadn’t_ known it, she would’ve realized it when she woke up to the sound of Daryl snoring and thought to herself that she wanted to wake up exactly like this every day for the rest of her natural life.

And maybe—no guarantees, but _maybe_ —she’ll get to.

She finds the bathroom by trial and error, accidentally opening a couple of closets in the process, and breathes a quiet sigh of abject relief when she finally squats to pee. She washes her hands, eases the bathroom door open, and tiptoes into the kitchen with a mind to brew some coffee for Daryl—

Only to find his older brother staring blearily down at the coffee pot like he doesn’t remember how to work it.

Beth hesitates in the doorway, cheeks coming up hot as the noises Merle and his lady friend were making last night echo in her ears in full surround sound. Merle turns his head to give her a look not unlike the one he was just aiming at the coffee pot, and she chafes her toes against her ankle, at a loss for what to say or do.

And, hell, why does she feel like _she’s_ the one who’s doing a walk of shame?

Yeah, alright, fine. The fact that she’s wearing Daryl’s shirt and little else might have something to do with it, actually.

But anyway.

“Um,” she says. “Hi.”

Merle grunts. His eyes flick up and down her bare legs, cursorily, almost like he’s leering more out of habit rather than actual intent. He doesn’t make her feel like Gorman had, anyway, and she figured when she first met him that he must be safe enough. Daryl wouldn’t trust him around her if he wasn’t, and _she_ trusts Daryl, implicitly.

She looks at the apparent source of Merle’s confusion. “Want me to make you some coffee?”

Another grunt, markedly more enthused than the last.

Well, alright, then.

This is the quietest Beth’s ever heard him in the short time she’s known him, but she suspects he’ll start up again once he gets enough caffeine in his veins to fuel his motor mouth. With that in mind, she decides to preempt him, handing him one mug before claiming her own and sitting down at the small kitchen table, tucking Daryl’s shirt in around her hips so it doesn’t ride up and give his brother an eyeful.

“So.” She pauses to take a sip of scalding coffee that’s not nearly sweet enough for her taste. She should’ve been more liberal with the sugar. “Your friend still around?”

Merle takes a long slurp of coffee, and Beth’s starting to think that he won’t answer her at all when he finally says, “What’s it t’ you?”

Beth shrugs. Sips. Yeah, not nearly sweet enough. “Not much, I guess. Was just expecting to run into a strange, half-naked lady on my way to the kitchen. She leave already?”

“Sweetheart, the only strange, half-naked lady ’round here’s _you_.” Now Merle shrugs. “Woman skedaddled a while ago, ’fore I got outta bed. Shoot, she might have a husband waitin’ at home, far as I know.”

Beth wrinkles her nose. “Was she wearin’ a ring?”

“Nah, but that don’ mean nothin’.” 

“It _should_ ,” Beth counters, and Merle snorts and rolls his eyes, like he was expecting her to say as much. “And, alright. Say she _doesn’t_ have a husband waitin’ at home. You planning on seein’ her again?”

Merle looks genuinely perplexed. “What tha hell for?”

“What, you didn’t like her?”

“Liked fuckin’ ’er,” Merle says bluntly, and, yeah, Beth gathered as much from the noises he was making for most of last night. “Ya real fuckin’ nosy, girlie.”

“Y’all made so much noise, don’t gotta be _nosy_ to know about it.” Beth hears movement in the next room, sees a flash of dark hair out of the corner of her eye, and her stomach rolls up tight in anticipation as she tries to remember what she was saying to Merle. “Least you can do is answer my question.”

Daryl appears in her periphery, and she tugs self-consciously at her borrowed shirt, feeling every inch of her exposed skin in a way that’s at once thrilling and mortifying. She probably should’ve gotten dressed before coming to the kitchen, but she wasn’t ready to change out of Daryl’s shirt quite yet. Still isn’t, to tell the truth.

Merle’s noticed his brother, too, and he gestures with his coffee mug, so that it threatens to spill over. “Daryl! Tell ya li’l woman here to mind her damn business.”

The thing is, Beth doesn’t mind being referred to as Daryl’s _woman_ , not even a little bit. What she _does_ mind is Merle’s tone.

“That’s no way to talk to someone who made your coffee,” Beth informs him, then appeals to Daryl with wide, guileless eyes. “I’m just askin’ about the lady he had over.”

The look on Daryl’s face suggests that he profoundly regrets getting out of bed at all. “What more could ya wanna know?”

Ain’t it obvious? “If he likes her, or if he’s gonna see her again.”

Merle brays like a donkey, and Daryl speaks over him, says, “Merle ain’t really that type.”

Merle swipes a hand across his mouth. “Nosiree.”

No, Beth supposes that he wouldn’t be, but what about Daryl? He and his brother don’t appear to have much in common, but what if they’re alike in this one respect? Beth doesn’t _think_ they are, but her doubts won’t stop niggling at her. “Well, that’s not very romantic.”

Something flickers across Daryl’s face, then, something like _understanding_ , maybe. It disappears before Beth can analyze it any further, though, and then he’s finally stepping into the kitchen. He strokes her shoulder on his way to the coffee pot, the gesture so thoughtlessly, casually intimate that it makes her toes curl.

She knows from the look on Merle’s face that he noticed it, too, but he refrains from commenting in favor of rolling his eyes at Beth’s naivete. “I look like goddamn Romeo or summat t’ya? Jesus, blondie, Daryl here’s gotcha spoiled rotten an’ I bet ya haven’ even thanked him for it.”

Actually, she’s given a lot of thought to all the ways in which she’d like to _thank_ Daryl, but she’s not about to say that to Merle. “You got a real funny way of talkin’, if you think that’s a proper way of speakin’ to a lady.”

 _Wrong thing to say_. Merle’s pale eyes light up, a wolfish grin cracking his weathered face in two. “Betcha let my little brother talk to ya all sorts’a ways,” he drawls, then turns that canine smile on Daryl. “What about it, eh? Ya tell her ta call ya daddy yet?”

 _Oh, Jesus._ Beth’s skin sets itself afire quick as a match to dry tinder, but Daryl, thank God, is too busy walloping Merle over the head to notice.

She just—she needs to calm down, is what she needs to do. Merle was just trying to rile his brother. That’s all there was to it. Beth’s not gonna let herself give it any more thought than that.

…Not right now, anyway.

Merle doesn’t stick around for much longer, at least, although he can’t resist leaving them with a parting shot, saying, “Nothin’ like a good lay to get ya ta sleep,” in a way that sounds pretty damn _pointed_ to Beth. Or maybe it isn’t. Maybe she’s still on edge and reading into things because of that _daddy_ crack.

Daryl waits until Merle’s safely ensconced in his bedroom to say, “Sorry ‘bout him.”

“He’s not so bad,” Beth says, because he really isn’t, especially considering how bad he _could_ be. Bad like the cop that Daryl would’ve liked to beat to a bloody pulp, if the look in his eyes was any indication.

It should’ve frightened her, that look, but it didn’t. If anything, well…

 _Well_.

“Uh-huh.” Daryl doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t argue the point, either. Just moves on to more pressing concerns. “How’s that ankle?”

If Merle hadn’t just said what he did, Beth would probably roll her eyes and tease Daryl some, tell him to quit fussing, _Dad_. But the fact is that he _did_ say it, and Beth’s not ready to unpack all that just yet. 

“Better.” She sticks out her bad leg to illustrate her point, toes curling all over again when Daryl’s eyes linger on the bare stretch of her skin. “Feels real good. I can walk on it and everythin’.”

Daryl’s not looking at her leg anymore. Seems to be doing his level best to look anywhere _but_ , actually. “Glad y’ took them painkillers now, huh?”

“Oh, shut up,” she says good naturedly, and bounces outta her seat. Her ankle barely twinges when she does it, so, yeah, his _I told you so_ isn’t totally unearned. “Here, gimme those mugs, I’ll wash up.”

Daryl’s face twists into a repressive scowl. “The fuck? The hell you will, girl, I got a dishwasher. Don’t need no maid.”

Who said she was trying to be his maid? She likes to make herself useful, for one thing, and she owes him, for another. He gave up his night off for her, almost got himself _arrested_ over her, so the very _least_ she can do is rinse out his used mug. “Well, I’m the one who got ‘em dirty, I made the coffee, so—”

“So y’ don’t gotta be cleanin’ up, too.” He swipes her cup, holding it above his head like a grade school bully with a wad of some other kid’s lunch money when she tries to take it back. “Get the hell outta here, go get dressed.”

“ _Bossy_ ,” she complains reflexively, then ducks her head and slinks out of the room before Daryl can see her blush. Let him think he’s won, fine, so long as he doesn’t cotton on to the fact that she doesn’t really _mind_ it when he’s bossy, not at all.

She hates that she’s stuck wearing yesterday’s underwear, but it can’t be helped, and all she can do is get dressed, fix her bedraggled ponytail, and check her messages. There’s one from Maggie, telling her to text her once she gets home, and two more from Amy, timestamped from late last night—or earlier this morning, if you wanna get technical about it.

_lmk how it goes!!_

_don’t forget to use protection!!!!_

Beth rolls her eyes, gathers up her things, and heads back to the kitchen, bare feet whispering softly across the tile.

“I’m not sayin’ you’re right,” she tells Daryl before he can make the anticipated jab about her impractical footwear. “My shoes aren’t _stupid_ , I’m just not takin’ any chances.”

“Uh-huh,” he says, and, yeah, he’s definitely smirking. He pockets his keys and gestures for her to get moving. “Let’s get outta here ‘fore your sister figures out you ain’t at Amy’s.”

Beth cocks her head. “How would she figure that out?”

“I’unno, she—” Daryl cuts himself off, but the cagey look on his face gives him away, and Beth starts to grin as a couple of puzzle pieces slot themselves together.

“What,” she says, “you scared’a Maggie or somethin’?”

“Ain’t _scared_ ,” Daryl retorts, sulky and defensive and just this side of petulant, but Beth doesn’t laugh the way she wants to. She’s not laughing _at_ him, she wouldn’t _do_ that, but it just strikes her as ridiculous, alright, that a man like him would be frightened of her overbearing and temperamental but ultimately harmless sister. And, yeah, okay, maybe Maggie can be a bit trigger happy where Beth and boys—let alone Beth and _grown men_ —are concerned, but it’s not as if Daryl can’t fend for himself. If he’s three times Beth’s size, then he’s two times Maggie’s, easy.

Her grin softens into a smile, and she almost takes his hand—thinks she might be allowed to, now, after he held onto her all night—but then she thinks of Merle and what he was after and what he got, thinks of what _Daryl_ might’ve been after, and she doesn’t. Her smile turns a little pained.

“C’mon.” She clears her throat. Shuffles her bare feet. “You’re right; we oughta get goin’.”

She doesn’t want to call the ride home _awkward_ , because it never is, not anymore, not now that they’ve settled into something like _routine_. The quality of their shared silences have long grown companionable, and now Beth uses that silence and the time it buys her to think.

He updated his stereo just so she could play the music she liked. He thinks she’s pretty. He gave her his old jacket. He’s touched her more in the last day than he has in all the years she’s known him, touched her and looked at her like he wanted to do _more_ , and she doesn’t _think_ he’s the type to go prowling through a bar just to get off with a stranger, but the small, cringing part of her that’s never had much confidence in itself is hissing its doubts in the back of her brain, asking her who the hell she’s kidding, thinking that a man like him would want anything to do with a girl, a _kid_ , like her.

She’s gotta ask. She has to _know_. She won’t stop feeling miserable until she does, and she’s tired of guessing. Even if she gets hurt—even if he doesn’t want her, after all—anything’s better than not knowing for sure.

Greasy dread begins to stir in her stomach when Daryl pulls into the empty dirt drive that snakes towards the farmhouse, but her hands are steady when she unplugs her phone from the aux cord Daryl installed for her, and they stay that way when she unbuckles her seatbelt.

“Thanks for everything. I had a good time, um.” She shifts in her seat, and her ankle twinges, bringing the night’s less pleasant memories to the forefront. “You know, excepting a couple’a things, but…y’know.”

Daryl’s mouth twists. His fingers twitch like he wishes he were holding a cigarette. “Yeah.”

She has to know. She has to. She’s just gotta do it quick, like ripping off a bandaid. “But, um.” She pats her cheek, feels the heat of her forming blush. God, this is agonizing. “Sorry if I spoiled your night.”

A frown forms on his face, but Beth likes to think she speaks near-fluent Daryl these days, and she’d venture to categorize this frown as one of confusion, not irritation. But, damn, now she’s gotta clarify herself. Great.

“Just. I dunno. Talkin’ to Merle…” Beth sinks her teeth into her lip the way she wants to sink into her seat and just become one with the upholstery. “Maybe I ruined your plans.”

“The fuck’s that mean?” Daryl wants to know, and, oh, hell. _Hell_. Beth wishes she could take it all back, just pluck the words out of the air and cram them down her throat, but it’s too damn late. It was too late the second she opened her stupid mouth.

“Well, if you—y’know, if you wanted to—to _do that_ ,” Beth tries, flinching away from the words, flinching away from the very thought of Daryl touching somebody else the way she wants him to touch _her_ , “and then you were stuck takin’ care’a me instead—”

“Do _what_?”

Beth wants to throttle herself. “Meet somebody.”

Daryl’s hands twist around the steering wheel. Maybe he wants to throttle her, too. “What the fuck, Beth? That what you think’a me?”

He sounds genuinely _hurt_ , and Beth can’t tell if it’s because she got it all wrong or because she got it _right_ and he thinks she’s judging him or something. Just in case it’s the latter, she rushes to say, “It’s not a bad thing. I ain’t judgin’ you, if that’s what it was.”

“That what you were doin’ there?” Daryl rasps, and now it’s _Beth’s_ turn to flinch.

How could he—how could he ask her that question? She told him to his face that she wanted to fall in love—real, grownup love—and now he thinks she was trolling for a one-night stand? Is he just saying that to hurt her, to get back at her for inadvertently hurting _him_ , or does he mean it? Is he honestly asking, or is he just lashing out? Lashing out because he’s, what—angry, wounded?

 _Jealous_?

“No,” she says, packing as much feeling as she can into that one word, desperate for him to hear the sincerity in her voice. “I told you what I was doin’ there. I don’t—I’m not tryna meet anybody.”

She isn’t. She really, really isn’t, because she’s already _met somebody_ ; she met him three years ago, when his hair was shorter and his eyes were warier, was smitten with him pretty much from the start, and that shallow infatuation has gradually bloomed into something bigger, something deeper, something that feels like _forever_. It felt like forever when she woke up to the sound of him snoring and thought to herself that she could listen that noise for the rest of her life.

She doesn’t wanna lose that. She doesn’t wanna lose the potential of _forever_.

“What makes you think I am?” Daryl asks, staring hard out the windshield like he badly wants to break the tempered glass with the blunt side of his fist and physically crawl out of this agonizing conversation.

And, God, she hates that she’s making him feel that way. Hates that he can’t even look at her, because, yeah, he usually has a hard time looking her in the eye, but this feels different. It feels _different_ in all the worst possible ways.

“I’m not accusin’ you of anything,” she says, repeating herself, scrambling to fix what she might or might not’ve broken. And now _she’s_ getting pissed; pissed at him for making this harder than it has to be and pissed at herself for opening her mouth in the first goddamn place. “God, Daryl, all I did was say sorry if I—”

“Don’t need to fuckin’ apologize,” he says, growling the words like a junkyard dog fighting against its choke chain. “Wouldn’t’ve done shit for you if I didn’t wanna.”

And, yeah. That. He keeps telling her that, but he won’t tell her _why_. She’s pretty sure she _knows_ why, but _pretty sure_ isn’t good enough. She needs to hear it from _him_ , or else it’s not worth anything.

So, she asks. _Demands_ , really, because she’s at the end of her damn rope. “Well, why _do_ you wanna?”

He still won’t look at her, and, yeah, that’s really, _really_ pissing her off. “Don’t ask me stupid shit, girl, Jesus.”

Yeah, no.

She’s had just about enough.

“You wanna talk stupid? _This_ is stupid.”

Daryl finally looks at her, then. Starts to, anyway, turning halfway in his seat. “The hell’re you—”

The thing is, Beth’s devoted a lot of daydreaming to this scenario. Back when she first thought about it—back when she was just indulging in a fantasy that she never genuinely expected to come true—he was always the one who initiated things, holding her face between his big hands as he leaned in close and breathed hot across her rabbiting pulse. Later on, as she got to know him better, she figured that she’d have to be the one to do it, that he was too shy, too careful of her, to start anything on his own. But whether she initiated it or he did, whether it was rough or soft or heated or sweet, it never happened because she’d just plain lost her patience with him.

But that’s what happens now.

She doesn’t let herself think her actions through. If she thinks, she’ll hesitate, and if she hesitates, she might backpedal. Instead, she allows her boiling frustration to fog up her brain and shunt her across the bench, into Daryl’s space, into the heat of his side. She gets in his space, cups his rough jaw in her hand, and drags his mouth down to hers.

For a second, half a second, her heart hangs suspended in her chest, fear overwhelming her frustration like high tide crashing onto the beach—what if she fucked up, what if she ruined everything—but then it starts up again at a gallop because Daryl doesn’t even hesitate, not the way _she_ almost did. Because Daryl, who shies away from every unexpected touch, is kissing her back, mouth parting beneath hers so she can taste the coffee on his tongue, so she can get inside of him the way he’s been inside of _her_ for months, years, burrowing into her head and her heart and driving her half-crazy with wanting him.

She’s wanted him for _so long_ , and now, unbelievably, she gets to have him, gets his rough tongue and chapped lips and his stubble scratching up her cheeks to leave a mark, to give her something to remember him by when this is over. God, she doesn’t want it to be over, but when he groans, deep and satisfied, she’s punted back to reality, reminded that her actions have consequences, and, yeah, he’s reciprocating _now_ , but what if he panics and runs once the moment has passed?

She pulls out of the kiss, lips tingling, cheeks stinging, and she almost dives back in when she sees Daryl’s face, when she sees him looking at her like she’s done a helluva lot more than kiss him, like she’s given him something he never thought he’d get to have, but, no. No, they’ve gotta talk; she’s gotta exercise some _restraint_ no matter how badly she wants to chase the tongue that’s darted out to swipe across his lower lip like he’s trying to savor the phantom pressure of her mouth.

“I—” She tries to say more. She does. But she can’t. Can’t seem to remember how to use her tongue for anything but kissing him.

Daryl’s head gives a little shake. “Nah,” he says, just that, but it’s more than enough, because now he’s raking his fingers through her hair and latching on tight, because this time, _he’s_ the one who kisses _her_.

Only for a second, though, even if that one second’s enough to make her toes curl and her lips hum. Just a second, and then he’s saying, “Don’t want anybody else. Hear me?” His coffee breath buffets her chin, his thumb strokes her temple. “Get that stupid shit outta your head now, alrigh’?”

And, God, but what a quintessentially _Daryl_ way of putting her doubts to rest—blunt and a little irritated, like he can’t even believe her, and it makes her want to laugh, breathlessly, but she can’t even do that, can only nod so fast their noses collide with a flash of pain she barely registers as she rushes to agree with him, to let him know she gets it, really gets it, because she doesn’t think he’ll start kissing her again until she does.

“Yeah—yeah,” she says, meaning it, and then she snarls her fingers in his hair and hauls him back in for more, _more_.

He gives her more. He does. He bears her back against the seat, covering as much of her as he can without laying her flat on the bench and climbing on top of her. She’d let him, if he wanted to, because _she_ wants him to. She’s spent years of her life wanting to get underneath of him, on top of him, any position he wants so long as she gets to _have him_.

That’s not gonna happen now. She knows it isn’t, no matter how desperately she wants to shove _him_ back and climb into his lap, straddle his hips and rut against his hard dick through their jeans. They can’t go that far just yet, not in the middle of the day when her dad or her sister could find them like this, all tangled together in Daryl’s truck and fogging up the windows like that one scene in _Titanic_. It’s not gonna happen, but Daryl’s groping at her leg like it might, like he wants—oh, God, like he wants to pop her fly, like he wants to shove his hand into her panties and cup her cunt, push those thick fingers inside of her and stretch her out, get her ready for his _dick_ —and if he wanted to do that, she’d let him, she _would_ —

“ _Jesus_ , Daryl.” He’s not kissing her anymore, and that’s bad, except now he’s feeling up her stomach and sucking on her neck, and that’s _good_. So, so good. “Where’d you learn to kiss like that, huh, _jeez_ —”

It’s a rhetorical question, but he answers her anyway, thick and muffled, and she _swears_ , she swears to God that he says something about how much he’s been thinking about doing it with _her_ , and she moans and clings to him tighter, digging in with her nails to leave a mark on him the way he’s leaving a mark on her.

He must like the sound of that, must want to wring more noises like it out of her, because he squeezes her breast through her shirt, prompting her to mirror the gesture, to rake her nails down his chest and grope at all that thick firm muscle as she takes his mouth with hers again.

“This alrigh’?” he asks, checking on her, and she wants to laugh because _alright_ doesn’t even cover it.

“ _Mmmm_ -huh.” They really, _really_ can’t go as far as she’d like to right now, but maybe she can straddle his lap, after all, tease them both a little, give them a taste of what’s to come. “Don’t stop, okay, please—”

And, hell, it’s like she jinxed it or something, because now he’s breaking away from her as the sound of an engine comes rumbling up the drive, as sobering as a splash of cold water to the face.

“Fuck,” Daryl spits out, and Beth struggles to focus her eyes as she points them out the windshield, following the path of the dusty truck that’s creeping towards the barn.

And, okay, alright. It could be worse. Could be a lot worse.

“S’just Otis,” she says. “Must’ve gone out for more pig feed or somethin’.”

“Yeah, well, Otis’d shoot me, too, ‘f he catches me with my hand up y’r damn shirt.”

And like saying the words reminded him of the position they’re still in, he lets her go, scoots back. Beth considers chasing him across the seat. Doesn’t.

“Wasn’t really _up_ my shirt,” she says, trying for levity. “Just over it.”

He huffs, the way he does when he thinks she said something funny. “Yeah, I’ll explain the dif’rence to your daddy.”

Beth giggles a little hysterically, but the laughter dies in her throat when Daryl looks at her, at her _mouth_ , like he’d gladly risk a shotgun shell to the ass if it meant getting to kiss her some more.

“Don’t go lookin’ at me like that now,” she warns him. “Or I’m gonna go an’ jump on you again.”

It doesn’t appear to be all that effective, as threats go, especially when Daryl shrugs and says, “Wouldn’ mind.”

Her lips twitch. “Thought you didn’t wanna get shot?”

“Guess not,” he allows. His eyes rove away from her face, but not to avoid her gaze, not this time. No, he’s checking for Otis—Beth knows he is, because she is, too. “C’mere a sec.”

She’s scooting across the bench before he’s gotten the final word out, mouth parting under his for a too-short kiss that still makes her tingle all over like she’s been shocked. Jesus, if this is what kissing him feels like, she’s not sure if she’ll survive the other things she plans on doing with him.

That’s a risk she’s willing to take, though.

He strokes her face again, petting her like a cat. God, but he’s so sweet to her. “Y’good?”

“ _Oh_ , yeah.” She’d be better if she could stay with him like this, but she knows she can’t, and anyway, just this is a lot more than she ever had the nerve to expect. She darts another look out the windshield. Still no Otis, but she’d better not push it. “I should go. But I’ll see you?”

He gives her ponytail a gentle tug. Smiles. “Yeah, girl, y’ will.”

She wants to kiss him again, but she doesn’t, because she knows she won’t be able to stop if she does. So she gets out of his truck, careful of her bad ankle, and eases her way up the drive and onto the porch. She can hear his engine idling from here, and she knows he won’t leave until he’s seen her safely inside the house.

She turns, and, yeah, there he is. He lifts two fingers when she waves, lips quirking when she grins. She swears she can feel that tiny smile against the curve of her cheekbone, like she’s still in the truck cab with him, like they never stopped kissing.

He snores. He _snores_ , and she’s going to wake up to that sound every day for the rest of her life. She knows she is.

She knows she’s gonna get _forever_. 


End file.
